February 28, 2012

“We’re starting with a new staff, kind of a whole new era here, and I think you can start building something now. The teams the past few years have been about: try real hard this year to win, you failed, and then you come back next year and try again from a totally different angle. I think what’s happening here is that they’re trying to build something a little more stable, a little more sustaining. If we go out and compete this year and it doesn’t happen – and you see this with some other teams in the league – you build up momentum and use that to build from the year before and I think that’s why it could be successful. I’m not conceding anything, especially in today’s game there’s way too many teams and with another wild card spot, I mean there are all kinds of other things that are available to make the playoffs and there seems to be a lot of parity. I think with the amount of young guys that we have you have to throw that into the equation if we don’t make it to the playoffs but we do it right and go out and compete well. If you look at it at the end of the year and Morel’s had a really good year, Beckham’s had a good year, Addison Reed’s had a great year – those are all good signs that it’s moving in the right direction and that’s what in my mind can be determined to be a success. Again, you don’t concede anything because anything can happen if you go out there and play hard. There’s a very fine line between those teams that finish in first place and second or third so who knows. You have to give a lot of respect to Detroit right now, not because of what they did in the offseason, but because they became a really good team at the end of the year. They were pretty good all year but at the end of the month they just took it to another level and they are the team to beat. They got a lot of guns and we’ll see what goes on there.”

May 30, 2010

Q: Do you the White Sox have many scouts or front office people who lean more towards the stats based, Sabermetric kind of player evaluation?

A: They do a nice combination of both. Assistant GM Rick Hahn is a statistical genius. He has a photgraphic memory. However he combines old school techniques and is a firm believer in scouting. Dan Fabian is also involved in technical data for the team.

White Sox general manager Ken Williams … and his director of baseball operations, Dan Fabian, are interested in some of these new-age stats, too, and UZR, or Ultimate Zone Rating, ranked Chicago as the fourth-worst team defense in the Major Leagues in 2009.

Developed by statistician Mitchel Lichtman, UZR, as described on FanGraphs.com, where the statistics are available for free, quantifies “the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity.”

UZR gets to this number by combining “range runs,” which are “the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity,” and “error runs,” defined as “the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by the number of errors he makes as compared to an average fielder at that position given the same distribution of balls in play.” Added to standard UZRs are the UZR/150 numbers, or “the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, per 150 defensive games.” …